A 100 year-old friend called in tears because her living room ceiling had cracked and she was afraid that the ceiling was going to fall. I did my best to calm her and offered to come over and take a quick look. Continue reading →

Last summer I used WEST SYSTEM® Epoxy to repair a small section of rot in a rough sawn cedar trim board on my house. Before gutter was installed, the trim board was wet frequently, but well ventilated. Only a narrow center section of the #2 grade, 1″×12″board seemed to be vulnerable. Continue reading →

I was in my basement applying some 2×4 furring to a concrete block wall in preparation for insulating and hanging drywall. I noticed a crack in a horizontal mortar joint about half way between the floor and the ceiling running nearly the length of the wall. I realized that this crack was an indication that the block wall was bowing inward. I don’t know how long this had been going on, or how much pressure it took to cause the problem. What I did know was that I had to take some steps to stop the wall from bowing more. Continue reading →

If your kids are like mine, they manage to break stuff you didn’t even think could be broken—constantly. As parents, we can either get inventive at repairing things we know little or nothing about, or we can get second jobs and pay someone else to fix everything. I like the first option better. Continue reading →

Cracks in poured concrete floors and foundation walls allow water to leak into basements and cause damage. With WEST SYSTEM® epoxy, you can, in many instances, fill the cracks from the inside and stop the water penetration without digging up your yard. WEST SYSTEM epoxy’s adhesion to concrete is excellent. It is very resistant to moisture penetration, and the tensile and compressive strength of the epoxy (about 8500 psi and 10,000 psi respectively) easily exceeds that of concrete. The following process is one method of epoxy injection that effectively seals cracks without requiring excavation outside the walls. The actual filling process takes some time, so use a slow hardener if the temperature is above 60°F. Continue reading →

Someone I know patched the cracks in the concrete block walls of her house using a different technique than the one I described in Repairing Cracks in Concrete. When it rained hard, her basement took on a lot of water through cracks in the walls. The cracks ranged in size from 1/16″ wide to some so large she could see daylight through them. Since concrete blocks are hollow, injecting WEST SYSTEM® Epoxy into the cracks would be unacceptable. So she decided to fill the cracks using epoxy thickened to a mortar-like consistency. Continue reading →

After living in our house for eight years and watching the ends of the threshold slowly deteriorate away and a few cracks and checks develop, I decided to replace the storm door, and figured now was a good time to restore the threshold. Continue reading →